An anxious Alaska Airlines passenger opened the emergency exit door of the plane and stepped out onto the wing.
CCTV footage shows the Boeing 737 Max 8 parked at a gate when the emergency exit door suddenly flips up and open. A woman steps out first with her right foot then her left, walks along the side of the plane to the back end of the wing, and sits down.
While sitting, she waved a couple times though it was unclear to who on the tarmac, and seemed to be carrying a bag or her belongings on her right side.
Flight 323 had just touched down at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport when the woman broke from regular traveller conduct and caused staff to respond.
The woman ‘became anxious and opened the emergency exit and climbed onto the wing’, said airport spokesman Perry Cooper.
She forced open the door while the flight crew were not looking.
Port of Seattle Fire members arrived at the scene shortly after 5pm and ‘helped the woman off the wing and on a ramp to the ground’, he said.
She was later transported to a hospital for evaluation as directed by the Port of Seattle crisis team.
It happened on December 22, nearly a year after Alaska Airlines made headlines when a door fell out while while the plane was 16,000 feet in the air. The Boeing 737 Max was found to be missing four key bolts.
The latest Alaska Airlines incident happened just days before several major commercial aviation incidents in less than a week’s time span have caused air travellers to become nervous about flying.
On Sunday a week after the woman escaped to the wing, Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 flying from Bangkok crash landed in Muan in South Korea, killing 179 people and injuring two crew members in the tail section. The Boeing 737-800 stopped sending tracking data before reaching the ground without extending its landing gear. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Four days earlier on Christmas Day, an Azerbaijan Airlines plane going to Grozny made an emergency landing in Aktau, Kazakhstan, and 38 people died. On Monday, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said it was clear that the ‘plane was shot down by Russia’ though it may not have been intentional.
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